Conventional wisdom - that bugbear of election season reporting - has held since the day Eric Papenfuse entered the Harrisburg mayoral race that he and Dan Miller would simply split the anti-incumbent vote and thereby guarantee Linda Thompson a second term in City Hall.

There are a number of problems with the theory, not the least of which is the foundational assumption - latently racist and rarely made explicit - that black voters will automatically vote en masse for a black candidate, any black candidate.

Rather than engage in ideological he-said/she-said coverage on the point, PennLive/The Patriot-News decided to test the theory using the numbers, as best it could determine them.

First, that required entering multiple years worth of previous election results into spreadsheets to gauge - precinct by precinct - historic turnout as well as past voting preferences.

Then it required waiting until after the deadline for registration for the current election to determine the exact number of potential voters in the democratic primary.

Finally, it would require a precinct-level survey of likely voters to see where they stand on the candidates.

Time and resources prevented a city-wide canvass, so two precincts were chosen: one heavily pro-Thompson four years ago and one heavily anti-Thompson four years ago.

The 8th Ward on Allison Hill and the 5th Ward in midtown, combined, constituted a political archaeological trench East to West across the center of Harrisburg.

Four years ago, the 8th Ward exhibited support for Linda Thompson ranging from 74 percent in the primary to 88 percent in the general election.

The 8th Ward would be our gauge for Linda Thompson's relative strength among her base today.

Four years ago, the 5th Ward in midtown saw voter opposition to Linda Thompson ranging from 77 percent in the primary to 80 percent in the general election.

The 5th Ward would be our gauge for the extent to which the anti-Thompson vote is split between Dan Miller and Eric Papenfuse.

The walking lists of currently registered voters and their addresses in each precinct were compared to the lists of people who actually voted four years ago, to determine likely voters in the mayoral primary.

On Saturday and Sunday, May 11 and 12, Patriot-News reporters Emily Previti, Julia Hatmaker and Donald Gilliland walked both precincts, knocking on the doors of likely voters and asking them to mark a ballot, fold it up and place it in a shoe-box.

The names of candidates on the ballot were listed in the same order they will be next Tuesday, with a final option for "undecided."

After casting the ballot anonymously, if the voter wanted to discuss her choice and the reasons for it, the reporters listened and took notes.

The reporters knocked on 180 doors, representing 221 likely voters.

And here a note of great caution: small sample sizes make accurate results in a city like Harrisburg difficult for polls in general, and this survey in particular.

No one was home at the vast majority of homes visited, and a very few people refused to participate, resulting in an 18 percent overall response rate in the 8th Ward and a 32 percent response rate in the 5th. In real numbers, that's 24 and 27 responses respectively - not a sample upon which to base a scientific analysis.

The advantage it offers is a glimpse - however blurry - into the precinct-by-precinct state of affairs one week out from the election.

Bearing all due caution in mind, here's what the results indicated.

Mayor Thompson's support has gone soft in the 8th Ward on Allison Hill.

Just one-third of likely voters surveyed indicated they planned to vote for her on May 21.

Another 46 percent indicated they definitively planned to vote for someone else. All of those who chose to discuss their choice said they had supported her four years ago.

Among those in the 8th Ward who have decided they are not voting for Thompson, Papenfuse leads Miller 29 percent to 17 percent, but that may reflect to some extent the fact Papenfuse's campaign manager, Michael Stewart, lives in the 8th Ward.

Thompson's final numbers could rise somewhat, as 21 percent of the likely voters surveyed remained undecided, but several of those indicated they were not voting for Thompson but were undecided between Miller and Papenfuse.

At least one indicated she may not vote at all.

In the 5th Ward in midtown, Thompson got no survey votes at all, and Miller and Papenfuse were split evenly with 41 percent each. Another 18 percent indicated they were still undecided, but of those who explained their position, none planned to vote for Thompson - the indecision was completely between Miller and Papenfuse.

But straight percentages aren't the whole story - because the number of registered voters - and how many of them historically turn out for elections - varies greatly from one ward to the next.

Even though Thompson may only have the solid support of one-third of the voters in the 8th Ward, the 8th Ward has more voters than the 5th Ward.

Then again, historically, the 5th Ward has a higher voter turnout rate than the 8th, resulting in more actual votes cast.

The Patriot-News took the number of currently registered voters in each precinct, corrected them for historic voter turnout trends, and applied the percentages from the survey to get an idea of what election results might actually look like in the two precincts.

If turnout is similar to what it was four years ago, with the two wards combined, Linda Thompson would have 113 votes, Eric Papenfuse 261, Dan Miller 220, with 147 still undecided.

But turnout four years ago was unusually high. Most attribute it to an "Obama bump," but it is more likely the result of the fact more than 8,000 names were scrubbed from the voter registration rolls the summer before, thereby changing the denominator in the calculation.

Either way, if voter turnout is more like it normally is in off-year elections (we did an average of multiple years), then the results, with the two wards combined, would look more like this: Thompson 85; Papenfuse 206; and Miller 175 - with 114 still undecided.

It's important to note that in each scenario, the number of undecided voters is more than three and a half times the margin separating Papenfuse and Miller.

The election cannot be predicted from such analysis with such a small sample - the other city precincts may differ considerably. Turnout will matter.

But this neighborhood snapshot suggests the conventional wisdom is partly wrong and partly right. Support for Thompson is by no means guaranteed in majority black precincts, but the anti-Thompson vote is split - almost 50/50 in one midtown neighborhood and 29/17 in one Allison Hill neighborhood - between Papenfuse and Miller.

This survey, combined with others, supports the notion that Mayor Thompson is in trouble.

But with the number of undecided voters currently tripling the margin separating Papenfuse and Miller, the only real conclusion one can make is it's likely to be a close race next Tuesday.

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